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The most nervous moment of my early life was in a dressing room, in Stellenbosch, in the very early Eighties, when I had to speak and pray out loud in front of my new teammates and their fathers, as their surprising and probably unpopular captain.
It was surprising that I was their captain, because none of my names have Dutch or French or Afrikaans antecedents.
I had the longest hair in the room. Let me be specific. My hair was the only hair that remotely approached my ears and collar. (My hair is a distant memory now; please indulge me in a moment of silence for the loss).
Our coach was, of course, from Stellenbosch. He had impeccable connections and a very deep voice, and always wore darkened glasses, and he always repeated the last word of each sentence twice to emphasize it (“deurdruk…deurdruk”), and he had a way of looking at you that made you uncomfortable but want to try your best, and he knew rugby like an seventy-five year old fisherman who has fished only one bay his whole life knows fishing (in that one bay).
I understand that he was also trained in embalming, and I heard he embalmed his own family members, but I cannot confirm this and by now, he is embalmed too. God rest his soul; he was a very fine man, in my opinion, with all the flaws of fine men.
I do not know if he was the one who selected me as captain. I know that in the space of a month, I learned more rugby from him than in all the years before. And all I really cared about as a boy was sport.
He also had some very strange ways of building a team, like a three night trek in the mountains with nightly wrestling bouts on a log over a river, or a race between the backs and the forwards to build a boat from scrap wood and metal and wine barrels and not sink as we tried to launch and get across the lake on his farm.
Later, when I had a crocked back, he took me in his bakkie to his farm near Wellington, and had a very old man from the wine-lands rub something that smelled very foul and appeared to be antelope diarrhoea on my muscle spasm. It worked.
The conversations about life we had on the way and back, to my house in the southern suburbs (not that far away, but a world apart), contained some phrases and thoughts I’ll take to my grave as unrepeated treasures.
One story I will share was his story of Cape Town, that does seem to have been true. My coach told me that a Dutch trading ship wrecked in Table Bay in the middle of the 17th century, which was common enough, but this particular fleet had a commander who ordered a clever sailor (and about 60 others) to remain on the sandy banks, near the mouth of the vlei, to build a makeshift settlement.
They had a year to wait for the next return fleet from Dutch East India. And the sailors had to build a fort from just sand, at Bloubergstrand. They had to meet the local tribe to trade for cattle and barely survive in that sand-fort until Jan van Riebeeck’s ships returned.
Jan van Riebeeck got all the press and glory because he founded a more lasting settlement and hedged the perimeter with almond hedges, but my coach wanted me to understand that brave work was done before by un-praised, unknown men, including the exploration of Table Bay and Robben Island who were able to tell van Riebeeck that here was a place to dig into, and maybe live in, forever.
But all of that came later; the night I was nervous came first. I was a fast loose forward with a nasty streak and a bit of fuzz on my cheeks. I was his captain, and he was my coach, and we had to get through this night of introductions together.
We had a braai outside near the cricket field and the men pretended not to notice when we drank a bit of rum from the bota bag of rum that a prop I can only remember as Abrie de Something brought, and we snuck a few beers too (for some reason, I remember the actual brand). It was cold, and we all wore our jerseys, and even some of the dads had their school jerseys on, and one had a Province jersey, and there was an old Springbok scrumhalf there, too.
My coach had warned me that I would need to speak to the team, and win them over, and pray, and I had to do it in Afrikaans. That was not what made me the most nervous.
It is true I did not attend the top rugby schools in the northern suburbs or Paarl or Stellenbosch that the other guys went to, but I could speak the proper Afrikaans of my very dear friends and neighbours next door, and I could speak the rough Afrikaans of our maid Sophie G. and her entire family who became -for better or worse – our family, and I could speak rugby, which in South Africa is inherently Afrikaans, like a chef speaks French, even in London.
I had never, however, prayed in Afrikaans. So, the problem was the prayer part, and the problem was our coach announcing that every father would tell the story of his rugby and what he had taught his son.
My father did not play rugby. He was, let us just say it, so very not Afrikaans. He did not even really speak Afrikaans; he understood enough to get by and keep his boss Mr. Malherbe happy, but he did not need much, in his Cape Town world. He spoke the language of science, of engineering, and was integrally involved in the nuclear projects that South Africa did in secret. He had a radio show for a short time, speaking about things I could not understand, for example, “When did Matter Gain Consciousness?”
His contribution to my athletics (sprint, relay, 800 and 1500 metres, and high jump) and rugby was to give me special mixtures of glucose he developed in our garage. On rugby, he offered me only the insight that it seemed like I should run lower to the ground, which is of course correct, but hard to do when you are tired.
I had no idea what he might say in this gathering, and I was as nervous as only a teenager can be about such moments, because we imagine it is the end of the world if it goes badly.
He did not mix easily with the group at the braai, and so I had to stand with him, until the coach came over to talk to him and I immediately detached to drink a dop and try to find someone funny to swear with and not be so nervous.
After the braai, we gathered in the dressing room, for the actual announcement of position by position, the fifteen boys and the five reserves, and our coach spoke of and it became very hot with all the big men and their sons.
When our coach asked the dads to talk about their rugby, to explain their rugby, there were some long stories and some very short stories, but I do not remember any of them, because I was just wondering what my dad would say.
My father was the last man to speak, before I was to give a speech and pray. He spoke in English, with just a few phrases in Afrikaans.
Looking back on it now, I understand that he was nervous, too, but very proud. He said he was proud of me and that he thought I was going to be a good captain because I would never let them down. This made me blush, because it sounded soft like I worried they thought I was.
What he spoke of next, was strategic, instead of tactical. He confessed that he had not played rugby. He observed: “Just because a little of something, it does not follow that more of that is better.” And he closed by talking about a team.
“We all do well, when we all do well. We all do better, when we all do better.”
Everyone nodded, and I realised I was the only person in the room who had been judging my father. They were fine with him, they had innate respect for an older man, and they liked what he said.
Because it is true.
When I prayed, I felt like I was lying, because I prayed as if God was on our side. I imagined the other boys believed it, even if I had my doubts.
I am sure that my dad and I were the only non-members of the Dutch Reformed Church. Everyone else in the room had a very clear idea of what they were supposed to believe. When these guys played rugby, got married, and went to get a job, they did it with guidance or a reference from their dominee.
The Dutch sailors in the mid-1600s brought their church, of course, and the French Huguenots in the late 17th century strengthened that church.
There was baked into this movement the idea of being protected and chosen, and the dark side of that was a tendency to exclude. They had a story – a powerful story – of providence and protection if purity was preserved.
Whatever I said after my prayer is of no significance. I did okay. I was a little drunk, to tell you the truth. I said things that only sound good in a room like that with men and boys trying to be men.
I did not need to worry so much. My teammates were not as closed-minded as I had imagined them to be, and we played well together, and I am friends still with a few, even today. Nowadays, membership in the Dutch Reformed Church has plummeted, and the power of inclusion is an imperative; as SARU has informed Heyneke Meyer and the unions.
I was not interested in the larger political issues, back then. I just wanted to score tries. We gelled into an attacking team, with plenty of power and pace. Our game plan was very simple. It worked because we became a team and we got better and it was good enough.
In that restless, violent region, bathed in the blood of the ancestors of the boys in that room, we were sitting on hard benches in a hot room with big men all around us, in a very old school dug into rock, surrounded by mountains, a short drive away from the beach where sailors built a fort of sand.
So what does this have to do with Heyneke Meyer?
Every new Springbok coach sits on a beach, in a fort made of sand. Meyer did that, in 2012.
Then, he was allowed to build something in 2013 and it worked, for the most part. But now in 2014, if he is to build something lasting, he has to find the rock.
I think he will need to use a slightly different set of materials. He will need to open his mind and include things he has rejected for most of his life. Around him will be old and powerful men who will tell him he cannot break with the past. He will hear the story. He will recognize the power of that story. He will be nervous. He will worry about what his father and his father before him would say; his neighbours, the men who taught him.
The story will be told to him: when you pass the ball, several things can happen, most of them bad. There are only certain places to play rugby on the field. There are doctrines you think you can change but you are wrong. We will win if we are strong enough, if we have no weak links, if we trust in our top players, if we are disciplined enough, if we execute perfectly.
But that story is built on sand. Time to build something lasting, coach. We cannot live on the sands of that old story forever.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.